IVERNY, Jacques
(active about 1411-1435)

Hero and Heroine (detail)

1411-16
Fresco
Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo

Until the 1960s the frescoes in the Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, were attributed to the Avignon painter Jacques Iverny. Then the attribution was changed to the Turin court painter Giacomo Jaquerio (c. 1380-1453). However, both attributions were questioned by later scholars and at present we can speak of the painter as simply the Master of the Castello della Manta.

Life-size likenesses of nine heroes and nine heroines decorate the great hall in the central storey of La Manta Castle in Piedmont. Figures chosen from the history of antiquity and the Middle Ages, from the Bible or from legends are aligned at equal distance from one another on the walls. Underneath each of them a tablet in a frame tells us their names and their virtues. Above them, to the left of their heads, their heraldic shields are depicted, arranged in a similar way in every picture. The figures stand on a narrow strip of ground covered with luxuriant, green vegetation. Young trees with slender trunks, their foliage overlapping, flank them.

The mural is a striking example of how in the International Gothic style attempts to idealize and abstract became intertwined with realistic tendencies. The basic concept of the representation is idealization: so that if we stand in the centre of the hall and look from a distance at the murals surrounding us, we can see figures embodying knightly virtues between the two stripes of the ground and the foliage of the trees, both being of the same width and colour. They stand in the middle of the fields framed by the tree-trunks, which are at the same distance from one another as the width of the inscribed tablets. The figures' emblems are clearly visible on their shields from the distance too. Thus the general impression is that of a strict and lucid regularity. But if we step closer to the walls, a world depicted with the meticulousness of a miniature is displayed to us.

The vegetation on the ground and the trees show a number of varieties, which can be identified botanically. The poses of the figures are all different and they all wear fascinatingly ornate clothes which are rich in details. At a closer look we can see that the shields are carefully fastened to the trees with thick leather straps. Only in front of an unpainted background could the contrast between an abstract and a concrete world be realized, since the background is a neutral substance, with no consistency. A golden background would emphasize the abstract character of the representation, whereas a multicoloured one would stress its spatiality. Here the role of the background is similar to the yellowish white unpainted vellum of some miniatures of the period. In both cases the neutral ground enables the representation either to break through the surface of the wall, or of the folio respectively, or else to strengthen it. This neutral ground may partly enhance the linear effect of the fresco, a feature that again establishes a kinship with illuminations. The white of the wall is similar to the colour of a human face and therefore the outlines and features of the countenances are separated from the background merely by the lines of the drawing.